Unforseen
by citizen17
Summary: Elizabeth helps the Engineer after he tries to kill her and it leaves him deeply in debt to her. She cannot imagine the consequences of her actions, the Engineer himself does not realize what has happened until it's much to late.


Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, just having some fun.

Unforeseen

Chapter one: The sleeping God

Doctor Shaw sat in the far corner, as far away from everybody else as possible.

Old eyes scrutinized her for a moment. Mr. Wayland almost felt bad for deceiving her. Almost.

She had tried to convince him to leave and go back to Earth because that this place was not what she had believed it to be. But he could do no such thing. Not now that he could be granted salvation by the creators themselves.

So he simply ignored her, the loss of Doctor Holloway's life meant little to him.

He had nothing to lose now and he had to try everything and anything before he could accept his mortality.

How could his own body betray him so? And how could the team of doctors and scientists he funded for years to find ways to prolong his life sit at his mahogany conference table and say to him that they could do no more?

It was when he heard that that he regretted not branching into medicine sooner. He was sure there was a way to elude death but it was just out of his grasp. 'Nothing is impossible' was one of the mottos he lived his life by.

Now the technological achievements of his company could prevent his impending death no more than the doctors could.

When he thought the only choice he had was to go into cryostasis to wait for the necessary advancements in the medical field that would save him and hope he would not die in his sleep he received Doctor Shaw's transmission.

He set up a meeting with her the very next day and learned from her and her colleague about their finds and beliefs. Their theory about the awaiting Gods gave him more hope than they knew. He agreed to fund their expedition to find these Gods and three months later they set out into the stars looking for them aboard the Prometheus.

Now here he was on some desolate rock in uncharted space on his way to salvation delivered by a scientist with a firm belief in the divine. He would laugh if he wasn't as desperate as he was.

He looked about him again. David was as still and expressionless as ever, Doctor Ford was a bundle of nerves but her attempt at keeping it in check was admirable. He couldn't see the driver, one of his men, a mercenary he couldn't care enough about to remember the name of. And then there was Doctor Elizabeth Shaw, at first glance she looked as if she was meditating. Her eyes were closed and she took deep even breaths, the only thing betraying this was the sheen of sweat on her face. She was in agony. The ride was less than smooth it jarred her fresh surgery. She really was a remarkable woman, a true survivor, one he was glad to have at his side in a moment like this.

The rover came to a sudden stop, they had arrived and excitement bubbled in the old man's gut.

Their advance through the labyrinthine structure was slow. Mr. Wayland was shuffling along at a snail's pace, even aided by the exoskeleton he wore. Elizabeth was not much faster than the old man, the pain in her belly was almost unbearable even if the sturdy suit she wore provided a little support and gave her severed muscles some respite. She talked herself into putting one foot in front of the other and try not to fall behind the others too much.

Their destination could not be much farther it felt to her as if they had been walking for hours but knew it wasn't the case. Neither she nor Mr. Wayland could walk for so long. She felt warm blood leek down her thighs from the incision in her abdomen, she prayed to God not to collapse before she could see the Engineer and get some answers.

The questions were eating at her very soul, 'Why had they forsaken them? What were they doing here? What happened to all the other Engineers?' She was sure the questions would hunt her for all eternity if she didn't get any answers in this God forsaken place.

Elizabeth felt a tidal wave of dread wash over her when David opened the door to a huge cargo hold filled to the brim with urns. She warned Janek of the find and went on after the others.

When they finally reached the room where David said the Engineer was, her ears were buzzing and she was incredibly dizzy. As she fell to her knees she felt suffocated by her helmet and removed it, she didn't care about any contagion anymore.

David was speaking, lauding the Engineer's technology and if she didn't know any better she would say he was smug about his knowledge of the superior species.

He told them that the Engineers were on their way to Earth when disaster struck and stopped them. Then he opened the pod and they had their first glimpse of the Engineer, it was peacefully asleep and watching it in this state made it hard for Elizabeth to believe that it had been on a mission to decimate the human species before he went into hyper sleep.

The Engineer stirred and then stood in all his seven and a half foot glory.

The obviously male Engineer took in their diminutive forms with confusion in his strange eyes and stepped out of the pod, he stumbled, the two thousand year nap had affected him if only a little.

Elizabeth was in awe for a moment, he looked like an angel.

Mr. Wayland prompted David to tell the Engineer why they had come, Elizabeth was enraged, the old man's reasons were not her own.

She stood on shaky legs and approached the Engineer alone, separate from the others.

"Ask him where they're from." She said, not able to hold back her questions anymore, she was a scientist to the core, she needed to know. "Ask him what's in his cargo, it's killed his people."

The Engineer turned his full attention on her, for the slightest moment he looked surprised then the expression vanished. Elizabeth felt a jolt of adrenaline jolt through her body when she met his eyes; it helped her go on even if David didn't translate anything she said.

"You made it here and it was meant for us. Why?"

"Shaw, enough!" Mr. Wayland barked he didn't care about anything but himself. He ordered the mercenary - Jackson - to shut her up if she opened her mouth again.

She meant to ignore him and took another step towards the Engineer when she was struck in the abdomen by Mr. Wayland's man. The scream that ripped its way out of her throat sounded foreign even to her own ears.

The Engineer watched her with his dark, eerie eyes, his attention only leaving her to glare at the one who struck her.

Elizabeth doubled over from the excruciating pain and her eyes filled with tears but she didn't stop, she couldn't.

"I need to know why! What did we do wrong? Why do you hate us?" She screamed.

David finally spoke to the Engineer in his strange language and she straightened some to watch their interaction but instead of peaceful conversation a scene of horror unfolded before her eyes.

The Engineer ripped David's head off and dispatched of the rest of the team in seconds. Elizabeth decided she wouldn't wait around for her turn; she grabbed her helmet and ran as fast as she could, her heart pounding in her chest and adrenaline high in her blood. Her surgery hurt badly but she pushed herself to run, she had to warn the others.

'How could she have been so wrong about everything?'

Her thoughts were scattered by an ominous sound, she realized the Engineer was powering up what looked to be a ship.

The next minutes passed in a flash. She ran, was thrown about by a powerful gust of wind and dust, managed to crawl out an exhaust shaft and warned Janek, pleaded with him to do the right thing and stop the Engineer from delivering his deadly payload.

Thankfully Janek understood the urgency of the situation and was willing to pay the high price in order to protect Earth.

Elizabeth saw only one pod eject from the ship before the Prometheus sped into the alien ship so fast all she registered was a brilliant blue flash.

The thunderous noise rattled the very bones in the two humans left on the moon and the resulting shockwave threw them to the rocky ground.

Elizabeth watched as the mostly intact alien spacecraft turned and began falling back to the moon's surface almost in slow-motion.

Rubble from the impact began raining down all around the area she was in and it seemed as the Engineer ship would fall right on top of her. She got back to her feet and moved towards an area she thought would be safe from the impending crash but after a few hurried paces she fell again.

Her heart thudding in her ears Elizabeth turned on her back to see her fate unfold.

The ship soared above the place she had fallen, close enough for her to feel it vibrate through her suit. It touched ground about fifty feet from her and the ground beneath her body shook violently, she screamed from sheer fear.

The last thing she saw before blackness overtook her was a huge piece of debris falling towards her.

When she came to the first thing she registered was that she was uncomfortably hot.

"Oxygen at twenty percent." A mechanical voice informed her. She blinked slowly to clear her vision. The debris had fallen mere feet from her and it was on fire.

"Oxygen at twenty percent." The voice insisted.

She tried to get up and after a few attempts she managed to get to her feet and take in her surroundings. The giant alien ship occupied most of her vision, it sat on top of the place the one escape pod ejected from the Prometheus had landed. Whoever it had been it was now as dead as the others. Pieces of the Prometheus peppered the landscape most of them were on fire.

She stumbled around until she spotted the intact life module of the late Miss Vickers and started walking towards it with the artificial voice warning her every ten seconds of imminent suffocation.

As she sealed the doors behind herself and took the helmet off the voice was shushed and she breathed a relieved sigh.

The module was in total disarray, Elizabeth wasted no time she headed for the Med Bay, perhaps the Med Pod could do something for her. If not she was sure there was more anesthetic in there, at least she would die numb. She dropped her helmet in the main compartment of the module, in the sea of books strewed about. The sound made the current occupant of the Med Bay alert and Elizabeth saw movement inside before she was able to touch the pad to open the door. She approached the door slowly and as quietly as possible. When she saw the thing inside she could barely believe her eyes. It was the monster she cut out of herself a couple hours ago, if that, and it was huge.

Horrified she backed away from the door until she was back in the main compartment.

"Elizabeth, are you there?" It was David.

"Yes, I'm here." She croaked.

"You must leave immediately. He's coming for you." The android warned.

"Who? Who's coming for me?" She asked dazed.

She was still facing the Med Bay when she was grabbed and flung against a wall with enough force to make her vision blur. She screamed, it was the Engineer and he looked murderous.

The noise alerted the monster locked in the Med Bay of their presence and it started throwing its self at the door.

The Engineer ignored the ruckus, he was too busy snarling viciously in her face, his own inches from hers.

He wrapped his hands around her throat and squeezed, not enough to close off her airways completely but enough to instill fear.

Elizabeth was gripped by panic and she was trying to pry his fingers from her neck. He was still snarling in his odd language and David was responding through her suit's com link.

Whatever David was telling him was only making him angrier.

"He wants me to tell you, Miss Shaw, that he will enjoy squeezing the life out of you." David told her, "I'm sorry." He finished.

"So am I." She wanted to say but couldn't because the Engineer was tightening his hands around her throat.

There was a loud crash accompanied by the sound of metal groaning. The beast had escaped and it hurled its massive body into the Engineer's.

Elizabeth screamed as she was thrown by the impact further then the two aliens, the Engineer screamed as well, it was a sound of rage mixed with horror.

The three of them were on the ground, Elizabeth, the Engineer and a flurry of strong tentacles grabbing at both of them. She managed to slip away and ran but realized she had nowhere to go; her helmet was in the room with the battling titans. She turned back towards the room but she couldn't go back in there unarmed. She searched for a weapon and found a large axe in the emergency box by the door, she grabbed it.

When she reentered the room, the Engineer was barely holding his own against the massive monster. He was keeping himself away from its mouth by pushing with his feet on either side of its gaping maw but he was tiring quickly, the monster was much stronger than him and it was a matter of seconds before the Engineer was overpowered by the horror.

Elizabeth thought it a horrible way to go, eaten by such a monster. She was sure that after it was done with the Engineer the thing would come after her and she decided she would rather take her chances with the humanoid; at least he wouldn't feast on her flesh.

So she swung as hard as she could; her target was its large, toothy maw. She hit home and to her surprise it let go of the Engineer in a beat and started thrashing around the room hissing and shrieking.

Elizabeth ran and hid behind the large bar, she grabbed the only thing available that she could potentially use as a weapon, a chilled bottle of expensive vodka and clutched it tightly to her chest.

A few moments later the horrible noises stopped and Elizabeth felt it was safe enough to peek around the bar's edge.

The huge monster was slumped to the ground, unmoving. Her problem now was the Engineer examining the dead creature at a safe distance. He was coiled as a spring; she could read the tension in his stance.

She too stood behind the bar, opened up the bottle of hard liquor and took a swig. The alcohol burned its way down her throat; she wasn't used to the sensation and slammed the bottle to the plastic surface of the bar. The noise startled the Engineer, who whirled around and faced her again.

"You want to kill me so bad, fine. But now you owe me and I want some answers." She said and David this time translated for her.

5


End file.
